Friday April 28, 2023 | 2:15 p.m.
Pablo Daniel Espíndola (21), charged as the author of simple homicide; Darío Alejandro Pio (23), syndicated primary participant; Laura Viviana Batista (24) and Alexandro Mario Becker (20), accused as secondary participants; they must wait until Wednesday, May 3 to find out their destinations due to the intermission period ordered by the Criminal Court One of Oberá. That day the sentence will be known.
The four are on the bench for the murder of David Anselmo “Napy” Ferreyra (20), perpetrated on the night of Saturday, May 1, 2021, in the Kilómetro 28 neighborhood of the town of Campo Viera, and this morning they silently faced the pleadings in which both the prosecution and defense attorneys assessed the evidence, expert reports and scientific doctors, testimonials and finally requested what they considered fair.
The requirement of the attorney general, Estela Salguero, was damning: 15 years in prison for Espíndola, 13 years for Pio, and 6 years in prison for Becker and Batista, maintaining for all the charges for which they have been deprived of prison for two years. freedom.
The defenders, José Padolski and Beatriz Beltrame (Becker and Batista) and Matías Olivera (Pio), meanwhile, requested the acquittal of their defendants, in the case of the latter for the benefit of the doubt. José Bridier, Espíndola’s lawyer – who yesterday confessed to having stabbed Ferreyra in an alleged defensive act – asked the judges to change the label from simple homicide to excess of legitimate defense and consequently a moderate sentence.
After listening to the arguments -including rejoinders and replies- magistrates Francisco Aguirre (president), José Pablo Rivero and Horacio Paniagua, reported that they will hand down a sentence only on Wednesday, May 3, at a hearing set for 8:30 in the morning.
One crime, two scenarios
Prosecutor Salguero raised the events that occurred that night in two scenarios, one at the celebration for Labor Day that they held at Batista and Becker’s house, where there were a series of incidents, and the other at Napy Ferreyra’s house, where the murder took place after having been allegedly persecuted by those involved.
“There was a first stage, there was a second stage and it was the defendants who participated in both. Ferreyra escaped from the place (where they were celebrating) and they all appear running after him. That annuls any possibility of defense,” the prosecutor said before to ponder some testimonies such as that of Samuel Pellizzer, who declared that he had seen “a gang running after” the victim. “It was a riot, they threw stones, bottles, a shout, that’s why I went into the house,” he recalled that the man said, also that “after the riot the boy yelled ugly, he asked for help, that’s why I went to see what was happening, but I was almost dead.”
He also pondered the story of the widow, Karina Sandra Pio (sister of the accused), whom he defined as “the only direct witness.” Salguero, among other points, stressed that the woman referred to the attackers as “a herd” that “had entered her house violently,” and also that “after holding and beating her husband, she said that Darío (Pio ) grabbed his neck and Pablo (Espíndola) injured him”, in relation to the stab wound.
In that section, the representative of the Public Ministry confirmed that “based on evidence, criminal report and testimonials”, Ferreyra “was injured in his house, under a tree, near a window.” She then pointed out what Isidro Batista (brother of the defendant) declared the day before: “He said twice that the entire attack was at Napy’s house, that Pablo stabbed him but that Dario grabbed his neck.”
“Espíndola caused the fatal injury to Napy Ferreyra, but if he was as afraid of her as he said, why didn’t he go elsewhere that night? But no, he attacked him with the help of Batista, Becker and Pio. They all participated in the crime “, Salguero analyzed, but he only placed Pio in the role of “indispensable” during the attack. “He did not poke him, but he was indispensable in grabbing him by the neck, imprisoning him and preventing him from defending himself. Espíndola, the perpetrator of the stabbing, took advantage of that.”
“There is no doubt that they all fired him,” he reiterated, although regarding Becker and Batista he opined that “they provided an activity that was not essential for Espíndola to stab the victim but they collaborated in a way that they could later carry out the act. They ran to Ferreyra, they came to his house, they threw stones and bottles at him, they cornered him. The two of them were in this place, just like Pio and Espíndola.”
“Any act of defense to which the defendants refer was distorted, they disappeared at the moment that Ferreyra ran away from Batista’s house. When they left behind they already knew what they were going for and wanted that result (of death), the evidence They are in the file and clearly, if they had not wanted to do it today we would not be here,” he said.
Bridier: “He was looking for his death”
“Ferreyra was looking for his death, in religion it is said that this is how the devil is invoked, and he was in it,” began the lawyer Bridier, defender of the main defendant, in relation to what the defendants said about the night of the Ferreyra crime, manipulating a dagger and throwing it against the wall of the house, allegedly said “today they kill me or I kill”, bringing up the testimony of María Núñez, who revealed before the judges that the victim had told her what himself to a brother of his in a chance meeting they had during the morning of that day.
“He wanted to rape Barboza (Batista’s mother), he asked for forgiveness, he injured Barboza, he hurt Becker, he played with a knife, he even wanted to hit his son and in that neighborhood culture these things happen, because they have their own laws, their their own ways of defending themselves against aggression,” the lawyer said, later focusing on Napy Ferreyra’s behavior: “A bully, he annoyed the entire neighborhood, he was violent, so much so that he even hit his sister and his own mother. On top of that, he never thought that the events that he premeditated to do were going to happen to him. Ferreyra never thought that he was going to be the victim.”
In another section of his argument, he attacked what was said by the witnesses Samuel Pellizzer, Karina Pio (widow), Julia Rodríguez (Napy’s sister) and Isidro Batista (Batista’s brother), and in return valued the statements of Barboza and Núñez, who Somehow they adjusted to the story of those involved. “Everything happened in a moment, there were not two scenarios,” Bridier replied, to go on to question the police task in the investigation: “They did not do their job well, they should have looked for better witnesses,” he lashed out.
Finally, he focused on his client, Espíndola, whom he described as a “gentleman” before the judges “for saying that he stabbed him because there was no blood on the knife”, and he continued: “My defendant has no criminal record, he is not violent as he was the victim, and he said, that he attacked him with a saw, so he defended himself, hurt him but with no intention of killing him.”
It should be remembered that yesterday the defendant declared that “we were walking when suddenly Napy came out of the bush and hit Pio with a saw. I had the knife that belonged to him because Laura (Batista) had given me to shoot when we were in the house and at that moment, out of fright I hit him with a knife but I didn’t see where I hit him. I was very scared because he is aggressive and he said he was going to kill everyone, I hurt him but with no intention of killing him.”
Becker and Batista
Defender Beltrame, meanwhile, in relation to those involved Becker and Batista, took them both from the crime scene and from the attack that killed Ferreyra. “My defendant and her husband in no way collaborated for the homicide to occur because they were at home, one taking care of himself and the other taking care of her mother who needed to be sutured after the attacks by Napy Ferreyra,” clarifying at that point that “when The witnesses say that they kicked him (Ferreyra) out, he means they kicked him out of the house.”
The defender also pointed to the victim’s behavior, her way of life, and attacked the story of the deceased’s partner, Karina Pio, pointing out alleged “substantial contradictions and errors.”
For the lawyer Beltrame and the co-defender, José Padolski, neither Batista nor Becker ran after Ferreyra. “They always stayed in the house, Becker with a nose injury and Barboza being cared for by his daughter because her head was cut off. They called the police, they were in the house and they did not leave there, moreover, to run to Ferreyra threw a piece of wood at him but in no way did they run after him, even less they attacked him, they didn’t collaborate either.”
“The two must be acquitted of all guilt and charges since they have not participated in the Ferreyra homicide, on the contrary, they have been victims of the deceased,” Beltrame closed, agreeing with Padolski and the hypothesis raised by his defendants.
Olivera: “There was no cooperation agreement”
The official defender Matías Olivera advanced in the same direction as his colleagues in relation to the degree of participation of the accused, although he strongly questioned the investigation, among other points, due to “lack of objectivity and seriousness of the statements, some elements are not evidence that are important because they were not kidnapped”, and in this context he sought to overturn his defendant’s accusation.
“The one that was exhibited in the room is not the knife because it did not have traces of blood, like the saw; nor is the stick with which the widow says that Pio had pointed at Ferreyra’s neck, so we cannot be serious in this case with so many failures in the investigation and the bad police work exposed”, lamented the defender, also pointing out that “the statements that were initially given by the majority of the witnesses in police headquarters do not coincide with the later ones, they are disparate, there are many contradictions and abysmal inconsistencies to the point that, at least in essentials, there is no common thread”.
Focused on defending Pio, he stated that “the participation he had was not to leave him defenseless, at no time was there a previous promise to agree to kill Ferreyra. Nobody says they were going to kill him, the fraud was not proven anywhere cooperation, which is behavior that requires a degree of participation.
“During the attack there was no way to reach a cooperation agreement,” he said, propping up his client’s version and affirmed that “Ferreyra came out of the bush by surprise, hit him with a saw and Pio ran away, he didn’t even know that Espíndola, to defend himself he had sunk in. If he didn’t know what had happened, there could be no prior agreement to say I’ll grab him and you’ll stab him.”
Beyond that, he also raised a different scenario, in which Pio could have supported Ferreyra. “Because he grabs it head-on and another person takes advantage of the situation, that is excessive and then it eliminates the imputation of participation by Becker, Batista and Pio” and continued: “Since there is no participation and there is no fraud, because the participation must be fraudulent “That everyone pays for what they did. If he had it by the neck, it was not with the intention of seeking Ferreyra’s defenselessness, and that someone has taken advantage of that situation is something else. We are extending the criminal offense to those who do not correspond,” he warned.
